ESI Global Forum 2010 declared a success

7 September 2010 Paris, France
ESI’s Asia user forums follow the same path starting with a thriving China Forum 2010

ESI Global Forum 2010, the first global users conference on Virtual Prototyping, took place last May 19-20 in Munich, Germany. Its success was proven by the active participation of over 280 designers, engineers, analysts and managers of customer and partner companies from various industries around the world. This diverse audience listened to over 100 presentations on End-to-End Virtual Prototyping, present and future.


ESI Global Forum 2010 Plenary session - Main conference room

End-to-End Virtual Prototyping, enabling virtual manufacturing, building and testing of a product in coherent progressive stages and concurrently across multiple domains, helps product development teams to produce quality results: accurate, for the right cost, at the right time and with impressive benefits.

“The automotive landscape is rapidly changing with new demands on weight, performance and costs. Lower weight and increasing performance requirements results in an increased use of advanced and ultra high-strength steels, while cost reduction justifies a move towards zero-prototyping,” said Mark Lambriks, Application Development Manager, Corus. “This means that all of our automotive clients rely on finite element analysis for all stages of their development process. Corus – as a customer-focused steel manufacturer – supports its customers in this development process by ensuring accurate material modeling with accompanying material data. We use (and combine) ESI Group’s software PAM-STAMP 2G, SYSWELD and PAM-CRASH to assess the performance of our materials and to advise customers on material choices.”

The overall feedback on the Forum was very positive, with 98% of attendees feeling that it was either a very good or good event. The quality of technical papers presented during the Forum was also evaluated as good or very good by 92% of the participants. 98% of the participants expressed interest in attending ESI Global Forum 2012.

We congratulate the following speakers whose papers were rated best by ESI Global Forum 2010 attendees:

  • Dr. Bernd Mlekusch from AUDI AG, CAE aided car body design
  • Dr. Lars Greve from Volkswagen, Advances in fracture modeling based on dynamic mesh refinement
  • Dr. Ulf Orrenius from Bombardier Transportation, Modeling of roof mounted aeroacoustic sources for a high speed train

“Best conference I have been to”, declared Dr. Amir Khan, Acoustic Expert, School of Engineering, Design and Technology, University of Bradford.

“The Global Forum was a great opportunity to get in contact with other users and to exchange ideas and knowledge worldwide”, stated René Erdmann, Project Engineer, IAV GmbH.

“I discovered an open-minded and visionary community”, said Florin Paun, Deputy Director New Business, ONERA.

ESI Global Forum was followed by ESI China Forum 2010, which took place in Beijing on May 27-28. That proved to be high energy, successful event with over 200 participants.

ESI’s next users conferences and exhibitions on Virtual Prototyping will take place in Asia in November: Seoul, Korea (November 16, 2010), Tokyo, Japan (November 18-19, 2010); – Pune, India (November 26, 2010) and Bangalore, India (November 30, 2010).

“2010 is proving to be a turning point for ESI and its customers”, stated Christopher St. John, COO Field operations, ESI Group. “We have gone through several changes this year; introducing the ESI new branding and focusing on ‘End-to-End Virtual Prototyping’, enabled by our strong base in Virtual Manufacturing. The first ESI Global Forum allowed the ESI community to witness the growing importance of End-to-End Virtual Prototyping and its already significant benefits. Key customers from Asia joined the Forum and we are now very pleased to engage with the larger community in local events.”